Coming Home

The ceremony Saturday night was beautiful. They were married by a Hindu swami with fruit, smoke, flame, rice, scents, a coconut, garlands and flowers on a low platform covered with rich cloth and pillows; the backdrop to this was fading daylight, rain, brick, headlights and narrow streets seen through paned glass. All this gravity, ritual, and devotion tucked into the corner of an 18th century New England inn. Gorgeous.

As is usual at weddings these days, my state was as emotional as can be, and I welled joyful tears at least half a dozen times. For all their obvious tradition and even artifice, I find weddings increasingly raw and ballsy. Hope marching into battle against statistics. Promises made beyond our innate ability to carry them through, but somehow made in good faith just the same. And then the community stuff, the village gathered to cast a vote of confidence, to give a blessing. On one level, these are clichés; on another, God help you if don't stack the deck every way you can. It's brave and it's real and what can I say - I believe in love.

Later - rusty as hell and wielding a couple of rented acoustics - Shyam and I got up and did some old songs of ours. And I did a couple alone, Saji and I did a Ryan Adams song, then we all sang "Beautiful Day."

After another great late night, we were up early Sunday for good-byes over breakfast. Car, plane, terminal, plane, van shuttle, car, BART train, and car and I found myself home about midnight.